


Let Your Hair Loose

by GenericUsername01



Series: Star Trek Fairytales [6]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, fairytale retelling, rapunzel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 02:39:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14823665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenericUsername01/pseuds/GenericUsername01
Summary: Gaila spent her whole life trapped in a tower, with only the birds to talk to. Until a wandering bard named Nyota Uhura finds her.





	Let Your Hair Loose

Once upon a time there lived a man and a woman who desperately wanted a child. They did everything they could. They consulted the medicine men. They prayed to the ancient gods. They made offering after offering for Neferdisia, the goddess of fertility. They even went to the mystics at long last, paying out precious gold coins in the hopes of a child. 

And at long last, the magic did its work. 

There was a garden behind their house, owned by a powerful sorceress, one feared throughout all of Orion. In it grew the gaila plant, beautiful and fresh and green and delicious-looking. The woman began to crave it desperately, to the point where it was all she could think of, the only thing that sounded appetizing. 

She began to waste away. 

Her husband decided action must be taken, and he snuck into the sorceress’s garden in the dead of night and stole a head of gaila. 

His wife made it into a salad and ate it voraciously. 

That only made things worse. It had tasted so good that the next day, she craved it three times as much. 

Her husband braved the garden yet again. He dropped from the wall and landed in the soft ground with a thud. 

And there stood the sorceress. 

“How  _dare_  you,” she said, “come into my garden and steal food from me? Do you not know who I am? You will suffer for this!” 

“Please,” he begged. “My wife  _needs_  the gaila, or she will die. She has such a craving for it that she can eat nothing else.” 

The enchantress softened. “If her condition is truly as dire as you say, then you may take the gaila and be forgiven. On one condition,” she said. “You must give me the child your wife bears, and I shall raise it as my own.” 

“No!” 

The enchantress gave a wave of her hands and a flick of her wand and suddenly a massive, thorny vine burst out of the ground, wrapping itself around the man and lifting him into the air. A second vine grew out in front of him, curling at the top, a single thorn stretching to be just millimeters from impaling his throat.  

“The choice is yours,” she said. 

* * *

 She was there on the day the baby was born, hearing its mother’s cries and coming to take her reward. She watched with impatience while the man held his wife’s hand and she panted and pushed, tears streaming down her face. 

The baby cried. 

“It’s a girl,” the woman breathed. “We have a beautiful baby girl.” 

“Thank you,” Gothel said, taking the child out of her arms. She had pink-orange hair the color of gaila leaves, though the rest of her looked like a normal Orion, with the same features and the same jungle-green skin.  

“I shall call her Gaila.” 

* * *

 She raised the child in hidden tower in a glen, deep in the jungle where no one ever went. She kept her locked up from the day she was born, and was impeccably strict in her upbringing. It wouldn’t do to spoil the child, after all. 

No toys. No eating more than you are given. No annoying Mommy. No asking about the outside world. And absolutely no leaving the tower. 

Children were rare. There was a population crisis on, brought on by some new fertility disease. People have done far more and far worse to obtain a child. All Gothel did was barter away some gaila. 

It had been the bargain of a lifetime. She would treasure it always, keep it locked away safely where it couldn’t be stolen or damaged. A priceless, precious thing. Her Gaila. 

Gaila was a bright, exuberant child, against all odds. But then, she was a child born of magic. Some oddities were to be expected. 

Like when she would talk to birds. As if they could understand her and she could understand them. 

“Gaila, birds aren’t capable of sentient thought. They can’t understand you.  _Please._  Shut. Up.” 

“Sorry, Mommy.” 

Valdeev trilled at her.  _Don’t listen to her. I can understand you just fine._  

She nodded. Sometimes Mommy was silly.  

And her hair. That was another thing. It grew long and faster than was normal. Gothel refused to let her cut it, and it soon became so long that when Gaila was twelve, she sealed off the only entrance to the tower and would hoist herself up using her daughter’s hair along to get in. Gaila kept her hair in a single long, thick braid—unusual for an Orion, but it would be unmanageable otherwise. 

* * *

 It all changed one day when she was eighteen and a wandering bard managed to find the glen that hid the tower by accident. 

 Gaila poked her head out the tower window.

The bard was the most beautiful person Gaila had ever seen in her life. She was gorgeous. She looked like the mystical anmy'oon, the spirit creatures of the jungle, beautiful and deadly. A dangerous temptation if there ever was one.

The woman looked up and locked eyes with her. Gaila's breath caught in her throat.

* * *

 She was doing her best to convince herself this wasn't the worst idea she'd ever had in her life.

The woman paced around the tower, inspecting it. "You live here."

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"For always. I'll never leave."

"Why?"

"It's not allowed. Mother would kill me."

The bard fixed her eyes on her. "You really mean that. You aren't exaggerating."

Gaila frowned.

"Let me help you escape."

She shook her head vehemently. "No. No, I can't. She'll find me. She'll know. I'm not even supposed to be talking to you-- you should leave."

"Okay," the woman said. "It's okay. I'm not gonna pressure you or anything. You're safe with me."

Gaila stared at her warily, and the woman allowed the inspection, her face open. She looked even more beautiful this close. She was enchanting.

And stupid as it may be, Gaila found herself trusting her.

"My name is Nyota," the woman said.

"I'm Gaila."

* * *

 It became a regular thing. Mother Gothel would leave every morning at dawn, and return just before sundown that night, or sometimes, every other night. Then Nyota would come, at first once a week, then twice, then every day if she could.

Gaila treasured her visits.

Nyota would tell her wondrous tales of foreign lands and planets among the stars and sing in tongues that Gaila had never even heard before. She was brilliant, the most awe-striking being Gaila would or ever could hope to meet, she was sure of it.

She fell in love, because how could she do anything else?

* * *

 

"I'm not suggesting we abscond into the jungle or anything. I'm just saying. It would be good for you to get out of the tower, even if all we did was lay in the grass and look at the clouds. We'll stay in the glen the entire time, I promise," Nyota said.

Gaila looked at her warily. "You won't try to convince me to leave?"

"I won't."

She bit her lip. Nodded. "Okay. But only for an hour!"

Nyota held up her hands in acquiescence. "Only for an hour."

* * *

 

Grass felt prickly and itchy. Bugs kept coming up to her, sometimes on her.

The sun felt like heaven on her skin and she took off most of her clothing to feel even more of it. It was perfect. It was how Orions were meant to experience their world. Their skin cells contained chloroplasts, or so Nyota said, staying inside all the time could be vastly detrimental to their health and lead to chronic illness.

The sky was pale pink with wispy white clouds drifting across it. It was gorgeous.

She reached out across the grass and took hold of Nyota's hand.

* * *

 

And then it all came crashing down.

Mother found a hair on Gaila's clothing: straight and dark and short by her standards. Likely belonging to a woman, going by the length and the amount of perfumed products Gothel could smell on it.

She decided not to tell Gaila that she knew about the hair. That night, she cut the girl's long braid off while she slept and looped it through the hook of the window.

She snapped shackles onto her daughter's wrists and ankles, waking her instantly, but it didn't matter how loud she screamed. No one was around to hear.

* * *

 

Gaila was unusually silent the next day when Nyota came. She figured she was just reading a book or something, and so shrugged and climbed up the braid regardless.

When she got to the top, Gothel was sitting there but Gaila was not.

Nyota froze, standing on the edge of the balcony.

"Where's Gaila?" she demanded. "What have you done with her?"

"Come to fetch your dearest?" Gothel taunted. "Your pretty bird is no longer in her nest. The cat got her, and she'll scratch out your eyes as well. You'll never see Gaila again."

"No--"

But even as she spoke, she felt the sorceress's magic take effect, her sight dimming and going black. She stumbled backwards, pitching out of the tower, barely managing to catch onto the braid and slow her fall. She hit the ground with a thud.

Gothel was laughing.

She took a breath to speak again, and Nyota started running.

* * *

 

It was three years before they met again.

Nyota closed her eyes when they kissed, tears slipping down one of their cheeks-- she didn't know whose-- but when she opened them, Gaila was smiling.

It was the most beautiful sight Nyota had ever seen.

 


End file.
